About Lookout
Built by a battery engineer who got tired of waiting for OEMs to catch up.
Twelve years inside the automotive battery industry — five at Ford on the Mach-E thermal stack, three at Volvo Trucks on commercial-vehicle pack architecture — made one thing obvious: the hardware around the cells was being treated as an afterthought.
Lookout was started to fix that, with documented processes, end-to-end traceability, and the certs the OEM supply chain demands.
2018
Founded in East Chattanooga; first article shipped to Tier-1 OEM.
2021
IATF 16949 certification. Crossed 1M parts shipped.
2023
Battery test lab online. UL 2580 component listing.
2025
38,000 sq ft footprint, 73 employees, 5 industries.
The story
By 2018 it was clear that the structural and thermal envelope of the cells themselves was being treated as an afterthought. Big OEMs were retrofitting cell-tray designs from consumer electronics into 100-kWh automotive packs and accepting performance compromises that didn’t need to exist.
Lookout was started to build the hardware big OEMs weren’t yet equipped to build internally — precision battery enclosures, busbars, cold plates, BMS housings — at production scale, with the certs and traceability the OEM supply chain requires.
First article in your hand before we ship a production run. FAI on every line. No exceptions.
Today Lookout occupies 38,000 sq ft in East Chattanooga, with 73 employees, 27 machining centers, and program experience across passenger EV, commercial vehicle, grid energy storage, mining electrification, and stationary backup.
How we work
Four operating principles. No exceptions.
01
No-bid when we should.
If the program needs a capability we don’t have, we’ll tell you and recommend somebody who does.
02
No subcontracting on critical ops.
5-axis machining, weld stations, leak test, and CMM all happen on our floor.
03
FAI on every first-article.
Per AS9102 Rev B, even when not contractually required.
04
Traceability end-to-end.
Mill certs, melt records, batch lots tied to every shipment.